This guidebook for teachers documents the "Harry Potter in Translation" project undertaken at the Language Research Centre at the University of Calgary. The guide also offers 5 sample lesson plans for teachers of grades three to twelve for teaching world languages using the Harry Potter books in translation to engage students. (Contains…

This study aims to identify aspects of speech-in-noise recognition that are susceptible to training, focusing on whether listeners can learn to adapt to target talkers ("tune in") and learn to better cope with various maskers ("tune out") after short-term training. Listeners received training on English sentence recognition in…

From a developmental framework, relations among list reading fluency, oral and silent reading fluency, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension might be expected to change as children's reading skills develop. We examined developmental relations among these constructs in a latent-variable longitudinal study of first and second graders.…

Recent literature has sought to understand the presence of epenthetic vowels after the productions of postvocalic word-final consonants by second language (L2) learners whose first languages (L1s) restrict the presence of obstruents in coda position. Previous models include those in which epenthesis is seen as a strategy to mitigate the effects of…

Understanding a story is an active process, whether children have listened to it being read aloud or, when they are older and read it for themselves. When children grasp a story, they (1) attend to what is important; (2) anticipate what is to come; and (3) build meaningful patterns from the many details. These active interactions with a story can…

This study examined inexperienced listeners' perceptions of children's naturally produced /r/ sounds with reference to levels of accuracy determined by consensus between two expert clinicians. Participants rated /r/ sounds as fully correct, distorted or incorrect/non-rhotic. Second and third formant heights were measured to explore the…

Although the importance of engaged listening in intergroup dialogue (IGD) is recognized, we know relatively little about when or why participants in IGD actually listen or what they gain from listening. Using qualitative analyses of interviews conducted with undergraduates who had recently completed a race/ethnicity or gender focused IGD course,…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of an intensive voice treatment (Lee Silverman Voice Treatment, commonly known as LSVT LOUD) for children with spastic cerebral palsy (CP) and dysarthria. Method: A nonconcurrent multiple baseline single-subject design with replication across 5 children with spastic CP was used.…

Many EFL/ESL college students, enrolled in colleges and universities that use English as a medium of instruction have difficulty understanding lectures in specialized courses delivered in English such as engineering, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, biology, biochemistry, anatomy, physiology and others. To help students improve their listening…

Research Findings: The purpose of this study was to examine within-group individual differences in the code-related and oral language abilities of an economically stressed Spanish-speaking English language learner (ELL) preschool sample and to evaluate the predictive relationship of these differences to later listening comprehension. Latent class…

The present study aims to contribute to the understanding of the effects of music education, in particular music composition as a classroom activity for fifth- and sixth-graders. The intervention (experimental condition) focused on a three-step-model for music composition, based on the Cultural Historical Activity Theory of education, and has been…

Much research regarding listening strategies has focused on assembling lists of reported strategies and gaining better understanding of differences in strategy usage between less- and more-skilled listeners. Less attention has been given to how the accumulating knowledge based on listening strategies informs listening strategy instruction as…

Self-reflective writing is one method of inquiring into one's inner experience of learning. But what aspects of self are honors students invited to reflect on when they are asked to write informally in their notebooks on what they've just heard or read? Are they asked to explore their "thoughts" and "feelings"?…

Among three sections that follow the Paper-Based TOEFL (PBT), many test takers find listening comprehension section is the most difficult. Thus, in this research the researcher aims to explore how students learn PBT's listening comprehension section effectively through song technique. This sounds like a more interesting and engaging way to learn…

Approximately 5% of older adults have a dementia diagnosis, and language deterioration is commonly associated with this disorder (Kempler, 2005). Several instruments have been developed to diagnose dementia and assess language capabilities of elderly adults. However, none of these instruments take a functional approach to language assessment as…